Venue: Roman Theatre
Town: Cartagena, ES

The Roman Theatre of Cartagena is a Roman theatre in the Roman colonia of Carthago Nova-present-day Cartagena, Spain. Built between the years 5 and 1 BCE, it had a capacity of some 6,000 spectators and was used for Roman theatrical performances. The Roman Theater of Cartagena is located in a coastal city near the sea in the Region of Murcia, in southeastern Spain. Cartagena has a dry Mediterranean climate with generally high temperatures (between 20 and 37 °C in summer), low rainfall, high humidity and moderate wind. Being very close to the sea, it is exposed to salt and sea breezes, which contributes to its deterioration. Nevertheless, the romans thought about the selection of this urban area near the port; on the one hand the building was far from the unhealthy area of the lagoon, located at the other end of the city, on the other hand it took advantage of the morphography of the land, locating it in the slope of the hill, built into the natural terrain, to fit the stands facing north and protected from the prevailing easterly winds. Its astronomical orientation was also taken into account, so that the axial axis of the building is directed to the sunrise at the winter solstice. The space in which the Theater is located is a densely built historic center that has never stopped being inhabited at any stage of history, which has favoured the Theater to remain buried for so long. Over time it had become one of the most depressed and abandoned areas of the old town, so that the comprehensive recovery of the Roman building has transcended a simple archaeological investigation and has become the engine of regeneration of a large sector of the city. Today, it is a densely populated and very busy area, which makes the archaeological remains integrated with modern buildings. This is also reflected in other environmental factors that affect it such as the urban pollution thanks to the nearby traffic and the vibration risks of the area. Moreover, its location next to some of